Loaded Words

Solution: a “solution” is meant to convey that there is some kind of middle ground where parties can negotiate to, something efficient and painless where economic factors like comparative advantage come into play (for example farming out front end web design to a firm in India who spend all day doing front-end designs). The problems with the church I write about have no solution (in the conventional sense of the word). Hitting people’s pain points, goading them towards acting in the interest of collective happiness at the expense of individual happiness is anything but a solution. In fact it’s more like creating a problem.

Service: this almost always goes with the grain of the power structures. Institutions ask and ask of you but when you ask of them usually you get a lot of push back. My church experience has been that people treat me like I’m invisible but are still trying to get me to do things for them. There is no concept of reciprocity or even awareness that I’m not being included.

Forgive: in most cases where one is asked to forgive it’s really just the person with less power deferring to the person or institution with more power. I think Frank Lutz would agree with me that “defer to the entity in power” doesn’t have the same ring to it as forgive.

Bitter: this is almost a slur in the Christian world. It describes people who left the faith and don’t sugar coat accounts of their experiences of it. Bitter people are often passionate, it’s just that their passion is in the opposite direction of where the church wants it to be.